I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! To check out more baby advice, check out the baby tips category.
7 Tips for Successful Breastfeeding by Aruni Gunasegaram
My now 5 ½ year old son was born by emergency c-section making my post birth recovery time challenging because a) I was exhausted, b) he didn’t seem to sleep very much and c) I developed a breast infection. Now a) and b) are par for the course when having a baby but c) knocked me senseless. I didn’t want to take any more medication given that I had just come off of several after the c-section so I waited to see if the pain would go away. When I reached the point where I would wake up from a restless sleep with tears in my eyes from the excruciating pain and I began having thoughts like “I wish I could die right now, but I can’t because I have to feed my baby,” I began a round of antibiotics. Within a week or so I felt sane again.
Now part of the reason I contracted the breast infection was because I wasn’t breastfeeding correctly. It took about 7 to 10 days for my milk to come in and then because of the infection probably 10 weeks for me to quit wondering how the human race survived before bottles and formula! I ended up breastfeeding our son for about 7 months and our daughter about 9 months when it was apparent to me that we were ready to move on to the next phase of our mother/baby relationship. Here are some tips that helped me establish a successful breastfeeding relationship with my children.
1. Mentally prepare yourself that it can take up to 8 to 12 weeks. Some insightful person…maybe a nurse or my lactation consultant, told me “Give it 8 to 12 weeks before making a decision on whether you want to quit breastfeeding.” So I told myself ‘this is a marathon, breastfeeding is important to me and my husband, and I can’t quit before 12 weeks.’ I remember saying that to myself almost every day and when I was 10 weeks into it I realized “Wow, this isn’t so bad. In fact it’s pretty darn neat!”
2. It’s OK to supplement! I know I will be chastised by the pure breastfeeding advocates for saying this, but in my opinion it is OK to supplement with formula especially if you feel something is wrong with you or your baby. I was so afraid to supplement because I was repeatedly told that supplementing was the worst thing I could do, which of course made me feel like an awful mom. But let me tell you, if you are exhausted and your baby isn’t gaining weight, it is one of the best things you can do. After feeling guilty for a week because my milk wasn’t coming in and my baby wasn’t gaining weight, and trying to survive a breast infection, I decided to supplement just a little bit and what a relief because it helped me gain my confidence back. I had more confidence when our daughter was born 2 ½ years later. I smiled at the nurses who said I shouldn’t supplement and did it anyway for the first few weeks of her life. UPDATE: Based on a reader’s comment below, it wasn’t clear that even though we supplemented in the first several weeks, I also continued to pump. It is so true that if you quit pumping, your body will think you need to produce less milk. So I pumped and I took time to rest a little longer to build up my milk supply and that’s why my milk came in! Supplementing is not for everyone but in my opinion the sanity and health of the mom and baby are of utmost importance!
3. Don’t be afraid to take that baby off! Some well meaning nurses told me that when the baby is finished he will fall off. They didn’t know my son. He would stay on for over an hour on each side just suckling half asleep if I let him. I remember breastfeeding sessions that would last 90 minutes which when I had to start over again in an hour and a half reduced me to tears. I believe not pulling him off when I thought he was done contributed to my getting the breast infection. With my daughter I produced so much milk that after 8 to 10 weeks I was able to take her off sometimes at 7 to 10 minutes!
4. Keep a breastfeeding log. So that you have an idea of how much time you are breastfeeding and maybe even what position you are breastfeeding in, keep a breastfeeding log. When our son was born I used a form I created in Microsoft Excel to jot down often illegible notes. Fortunately when our daughter was born, we had an alpha version of our mobile software program, Baby Insights, available. I could easily keep track of my pumping and breastfeeding schedule which helped me understand her feeding patterns and how much milk I was producing.
5. Drink plenty of water. Drinking plenty of fluids, eating well, and getting good rest is a huge contributor to successful breastfeeding. In fact a vast majority of breast milk is water. Keep a bottle of water next to you when you breastfeed.
6. Ask and/or pay for help. Whether it’s a lactation consultant, a post-partum doula, your significant other, or a friend who has breastfed before, ask for help. A good lactation consultant can give you great tips on how to get your baby to latch on and feed properly. If you can afford a post-partum doula a few hours per week, they can be a god-send with both household and breastfeeding support. Ask your spouse to help you keep the breastfeeding log, bring you water, fresh fruit, snacks, and the baby!
7. Relax. I know this is easier said than done, but I found the more relaxed I was, the more my milk flowed. Lack of sleep and stress actually reduces your body’s ability to create breast milk. And worse you may start to resent the process and maybe even your baby! Watch a funny show or movie. Take a nap. Take a leisurely walk. Chat with a friend. Or just bawl your eyes out…we all know what a stress relief that can be!
Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to blogger at babblesoft dot com. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and lotsa link love!
I see the world of childcare changing before our eyes and having a place to keep up with your baby’s precious moments and activities can be a great way not only to share with your family and friends but also to make sure your baby is getting what he or she needs. More often than not, these days there are many people involved in childcare from dad, to nannies, to sitters, to grandparents, to aunts, and communicating effectively with everyone about when your baby ate, slept, or had medicine can be extremely important!
Why Keeping a Daily Journal is Important for Moms and Nannies By Aruni Gunasegaram, President and Founder of Babble Soft Written for the International Nanny Association Spring 2008 newsletter
When a new mom leaves her infant in the care of a nanny or newborn care specialist, what are her concerns? What does she want to know? How can a nanny help her feel more connected to her baby and help her deal with possible feelings of guilt over leaving her baby?
A new mom’s perspective As a new mom, I was so concerned about leaving my baby with anyone else … even my husband! When I returned, I wanted to know when he ate, if he slept, and practically everything he did. Now that I have two kids, I still ask their teachers and care providers what they did during the day. It’s so comforting to have an idea of how their day went. I sent our son to a home care on a part-time basis when he was a baby. I felt frustrated by the vague answers I received when I asked about the details of his day; but I bit my tongue, felt guilty, and walked away wondering what I had missed.
It was difficult to leave my son with someone else and thereafter, leave my daughter – but I wanted to work. My career is very important to me and I knew I would be a better mom if I was able to pursue my passion. However, I still wanted to stay connected to my babies. It would have been a pleasure to receive an email, a text message, a picture, or even have the ability to log in to a website to see how my babies were doing. It would have made my life so much easier if I was assured that although they might have cried a bit when left them, they were eating well, sleeping well, learning and having fun.
I was still breastfeeding when I returned to work, and I made every attempt to time my pumping sessions so that I could nurse my babies when I picked them up. If I arrived only to find out they had just been fed, I would have to go home and pump instead of feed them, making me feel very disappointed. On the other hand, it was nice having breastfeeding support and knowing that I had expressed enough milk for them while I was away made me feel more connected to them.
What moms want to know In the “old days,” moms had no choice but to stay at home. They could get advice and make decisions based on one-on-one face time with baby, family members, and friends. Nowadays, moms rely on their nannies to communicate their baby’s daily activities, issues, fussy periods, smiles, and schedules. When moms are not present, having the opportunity to review their baby’s activities at a glance in a daily journal or report is not only powerful, it helps them and their nanny make better baby care decisions. It is also a great way to provide records for their pediatricians, which can aid in making medical decisions. Here are more examples that illustrate the importance of keeping a daily journal:
A new mom misses important milestones. While she is at work, baby shows off her biggest smile or makes a first attempt at crawling. Imagine a caregiver who captures the moment via a picture, includes a milestone caption, and emails it to the mom. What a way to brighten her day. Although the mom is not present physically, she can take delight in knowing that the true “first” was captured.
An infant spits up often but with no discernible pattern. Both the mom and nanny are busy and jot down handwritten notes, which might be stained or misplaced by the next day! Maintaining an online daily record of the baby’s feedings (with corresponding spit-up times) can help to establish a pattern of feeding times and a correlation between the feeding quantity and spit-up periods. The mom can forward the reports to the doctor to aid in a decision regarding whether her baby needs medicine for acid reflux or if there is a need to simply change the baby’s feeding schedule.
A baby has difficulty sleeping. Mom (or dad) puts the baby down in a specific manner and in a specific place during the weekends. The nanny arrives and puts the baby down in a different manner, thus she witnesses a different outcome. The baby appears confused, which results in additional stress for both the nanny and family. One solution is to review online reports that are designed to track a baby’s sleep patterns and reveal how the baby was put to sleep. The reports can serve as physical proof that specific baby sleep positions or methods work better than others for the baby. The reports can also give parents the assurance that their baby is okay, and shifting their behavior or the nanny’s behavior can make life easier for everyone.
A baby needs regular medications. Administering medications is a critical part of providing childcare. Therefore, it is beneficial to have a central place where medicine doses are recorded. This procedure can allow both the mom and nanny to ensure medicine doses, reactions, and duration are properly recorded and timed. Proper daily record keeping can help to avoid accidental overdoses and ensure a dose is not missed.
The nanny runs out of expressed breast milk for baby. If the mom keeps daily pumping records and both the nanny and mom keep daily bottle-feeding records, Mom can adjust her breastfeeding and pumping schedule to ensure there is enough expressed milk for her baby.
There are many more sound reasons to keep daily records. However, the most important reasons in my opinion, are for the health and well-being of the baby, and improved communication between the nanny and family. Although moms today have many more opportunities than they did in the past, they also have more decisions to make and more balls to juggle. Keeping daily records of an infant’s activities helps nannies and moms make better baby care decisions – and it helps moms feel more connected to their baby. A happy mom means a happier baby!
Aruni Gunasegaram is the President/Founder of Babble Soft and she blogs at entrepreMusings. To learn more about Babble Soft, please visit http://www.babblesoft.com.
I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! 🙂
Since there were so many views of my first baby tip on Increasing Milk Supply post, and I saw on Carole’s blog recently that she was dealing with the exact same issue, I asked her to write up a baby tip based on her experience for my readers. Carole is one my faithful blog readers and a Baby Insights user. She has 3 kids at home and blogs at Alias Tex. She is an amazing person and an awesome Mom! Thank you Carole for a great baby tip!
I’ve nursed three babies and have had supply issues with all three. I was not able to correct the issue with the first two, so I ended up supplementing with formula both times. When I discovered that my supply was low the third time around, I decided to work with a lactation consultant. I ended up supplementing with formula for about a month; in total, I think Christina ended up having about 2 1/2 cans of formula before my supply was enough to make it unnecessary. Here are the things we tried, in the order in which we tried them:
– Pumping. I pumped as often as I could, but at least 5 or 6 times a day, for at least 10 – 15 minutes each time. (The pumping was in conjunction with all of the other things I was doing — I’ve heard that for some women, pumping alone can help, but I wasn’t one of them.)
– Herbs. I took fenugreek, blessed thistle, and alfalfa — the highest dose of each that I could find at Whole Foods — two or three of each, three times a day. (This did increase my supply some, but not enough that I could stop supplementing.)
– Domperidone* — I take 20mg capsules. I started out taking five of them a day, then — once my supply was established — dropped down to four. I tried cutting back to three and discovered that that was too low to maintain my supply, so I rented a pump for a week and jumped back up to five pills a day again. Now, I’m down to four capsules a day, and I have enough milk that Christina only nurses one side at a time — and doesn’t usually even empty that one! (I don’t like having quite that much extra milk, so now every couple of days I’ll take only three capsules — it seems to be working out….)
– Oxytocin nasal spray** — 1OU/ML. (1 spray in each nostril, 2 – 3 minutes before nursing.) In addition to my supply issues, I’ve had problems with my letdown reflex. Sometimes it worked just fine, but it was not uncommon for me to nurse her for 45 minutes or more without having a letdown! I also tended to have them at random times throughout the day/night, and then I couldn’t have another one for at least an hour, so I had to try to nurse her whether she seemed hungry or not! The nasal spray has changed all of that: if I don’t have a letdown when Christina starts nursing, I use my nasal spray and I have a letdown within a couple of minutes. The only times it hasn’t worked are when I was experimenting, trying to see if I could do just one nostril, or use a drop instead of a spray. (It does work as drops, but I have to do a couple in each side, not just one.)
Now that I have it all under control, my days of sobbing in frustration seem like a bad dream — it almost makes me want to have another, just so I can see what it’s like to get it right from the start! Imagine: me, with a baby who has never tasted formula…. It could happen! : )
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*Some of you may know that the FDA issued a warning about Domperidone several years ago. (On the same day that the National Breastfeeding Campaign was to begin!) It’s actually a stomach medicine, and was prescribed off-label for breastfeeding mothers. Because of the FDA’s warning, it’s no longer possible to just walk into a pharmacy and get a prescription for Domperidone; you have to go to a compounding pharmacy to get it, and even some of those are afraid of FDA reprisals if they fill the prescriptions. Fortunately, for those of us who need it to maintain a normal milk supply, there are still doctors and midwives willing to prescribe it for us, and some compounding pharmacies who will still make it.
Domperidone is widely considered a safe drug when administered orally, and is approved by the AAP for use in breastfeeding mothers. Many were outraged when the FDA issued its warning — especially since the cases it cites in the warning were decades old.
Official statements from prominent physicians can be found here.
A very good summary of the controversy can be found here, and many more links here.
**I also get my Oxytocin nasal spray from a compounding pharmacy.
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Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to blogger at babblesoft dot com for possible inclusion. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!
Check out the new and improved DadLabs site. I’ve been to their lab and met with pretty much all of them. I have to say they are pretty darn cool. They have some downright hilarious videos and I’m embedding some of them below.
Manly breastfeeding – a.k.a. Daditude ‘Milk Man’ – (if you are easily offended you might not want to watch this one. If you are ready for a good laugh, I recommend that you watch this one at least 5 times but make sure you aren’t holding a drink. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t stop the tears!).
The Lab Shoes (all about finding that ever elusive kid’s shoe when you are about to walk out the door)
I can’t wait for them to do a Gear Daddy video on Babble Soft!
Well it’s here. With an assist from our new producing partner For Your Imagination, the DadLabs site is relaunched, and Season 2 has officially begun. Our kickoff episode is appropriately enough, all about shoes. Get it? Kick. Shoes. And check out the special guest appearance by Cooper John!
We could really use your support in this critical time, so please drop by the site and check out a video or three. We will be posting a new episode of each of our shows each week: the Lab on Mondays, the Lounge on Tuesdays, Daditude on Wednesdays and Gear Daddy on Thursdays. You can also check out a classic: all 100 episodes from Season 1 are available on the site. You can even subscribe to us on iTunes now.
Our goal is 150,000 video views in the next two weeks, so if you wouldn’t mind, please watch 150,000 videos. If you can’t manage that, please tell everybody you know to stop by the site and have a look. And let us know what you think by leaving us comments. Help us be the best internet television show on fatherhood. Which shouldn’t be hard because I’m pretty sure we’re the only…internet…television…
Special thanks to the amazing guys at For Your Imagination. When they announced their timetable for getting the relaunch done, I thought they were nuts. Which they clearly are. But they got it done, and it’s amazing.
So stop listening to me ramble on and go to the site! And watch a bunch of videos and leave a bunch of comments.
When helping my cousin with her new baby during my trip to NYC, I was reminded of some tips to increase milk supply. When my first was born, my milk didn’t come in until over 10-14 days later. I was recovering from an emergency c-section and was exhausted. I was so distressed that I wasn’t able to provide enough food for my son that I often broke down in tears. When he was a week or so old, my mom, husband, and I took him to a local mother’s store and with the help of a wonderful lactation consultant I weighed him, fed him, and weighed him again. I freaked out because he weighed exactly the same as before! Talk about feeling like a bad mommy. However, after a few minutes we all realized that we had forgotten to put his socks back on when we weighed him the second time, and he had actually gained some weight! Phew! I can laugh about it now but boy at the moment…
Well-meaning lactation consultants and nurses told me repeatedly that I shouldn’t supplement. I felt guilty (ugh!) about doing it, but I had to and I’m glad I did. A few weeks later once my milk was in we no longer needed to supplement. When my daughter was born, I had no qualms about supplementing the first couple of weeks of her life because I knew with certainty she would breastfeed exclusively and it gave me some time to recover a bit faster. This time my milk came in within 3 to 5 days. So here are some ideas from my experience and my cousin’s:
Fenugreek. This seed is commonly used in pill form to increase milk supply. Fortunately for me, it is often used in Sri Lankan and Indian cooking and since my mom was here the first couple of weeks my kids were born I got to eat lots of tasty curries cooked with fenugreek. I’m convinced this is what helped bring my milk in faster. I’ll never know for certain but it was a yummy endeavor nonetheless!
Dark beer. My cousin was advised to drink dark beer to help increase her supply. We were both discussing how it was too bad that she wasn’t advised to drink a lot of red wine…which we both love.
Garlic. I also ate a little more garlic than normal in the curries my mother made, but I have heard that some people will eat so much that their milk starts smelling like garlic! They say that babies like the flavor/smell of garlic in their mother’s milk so they suck harder and eat more. Go figure!
Whole grains/Oatmeal. I’m not sure how this works but it’s probably related to why dark beer is helpful.
Rest. Sleep. Warm Showers. Although it’s very hard to get any rest those first several weeks home, it’s probably what the body needs most to help stimulate milk production. When you sleep, relax, and rest your body has time to make milk without added stress. Stress has been shown to decrease milk supply because your body is using it’s energy for things other than making milk!
Aruni
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Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!
Here’s a tip on breastfeeding a newborn: Use TWO boppies. When I had my son in 2002, I received a boppy (breastfeeding pillow) at my baby shower. I really liked using it but discovered that I often had to put cushions or pillows beneath it to get our newborn son at a comfortable position for feeding. The cushions would slip out or somehow (I don’t know how) he would kick them out. I would then find myself hunching over and my back aching a bit after a while. When my daughter was born in 2005, I received another one and happened to try stacking them and putting them both around my waist. It was great! Since I’m a bit short-waisted having the two breastfeeding pillows made me sit up straight thereby forcing me to maintain good posture (a plus). Having two boppies was helpful to me in the cradle, cross-cradle, and football positions. In the football position, I would put both boppies stacked on each other to my right or left and then I would place my daughter with her head toward me and her body/feet behind me resting on one of the sides of the boppy. I used two for the first probably 12-16 weeks of her life.
Of course it’s not that easy to take a boppy with you when you are breastfeeding/nursing-in-public so on those occassions I propped them on our big, fat diaper bag because I always had it handy. 😉
If you can’t afford another boppy, try to find a really sturdy/hard cushion that you can place under the boppy for the football position. You’d have to find two slightly firm cushions if you want to use them for the cradle and cross-cradle positions. You can also ask a friend if they are done with their boppy…I just gave one of ours away to a friend. We also used our boppy for tummy time, sitting support, and all sorts of fun things that I’m sure you are not supposed to use it for. 🙂
Aruni
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Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!
To help illustrate how different people use Baby Manager (i.e., the baby is managing you!), we have begun creating user stories/case studies.
We appreciate that many new parents are uncomfortable with having their picture online or don’t want to even think about the possibility of being mentioned in print or being on TV the first year or so after they have a baby. But if you are the type of new parent who loves the spotlight, doesn’t care about being in the process of losing those baby pounds, and loves Baby Manager, we welcome your participation with open arms!
If you are interested, please activate a FREE Trial of Baby Manager and get familiar with it. If you find that it works for your family, you want to tell the world about your great experience using it, and you are interested in being a part of our media campaign, please email us at blogger@babblesoft.com for more information and a hook-up. It’s not as big as the Harpo Hook-Up by Oprah, but it just might be what you need. 🙂
We will be posting all future case studies in this blog and on our Testimonial page.
So now for our very first user story about the Hayes family…drum roll please…ta dah (as my 2 year old would say)…
The Lactivist, Jennifer Laycock, recently posted an entry in her blog called Am I the Only One? with a hilarious list of things her cousin sent her that outlines what people should do BEFORE becoming a parent called Thinking of becoming a parent? Try this 15 step plan first. Since we now know that breastfeeding while laughing is good for your baby, this will be a great thing to read while breastfeeding. I was ROTFL when reading this! Check out her blog…it’s one of my faves!
Thinking of becoming a parent? Try this 15 step plan first.
Lesson 1
1. Go to the grocery store.2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.
Lesson 2
Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already
are parents and berate them about their…
1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior. Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.
Lesson 3
A really good way to discover how the nights might feel….
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)
Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.
Lesson 4
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out..
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?
Lesson 5
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.
Time allowed for this – all morning.
Lesson 6
1. Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and a jar of paint, turn it into an alligator.
2. Now take the tube from a roll of toilet paper. Using only Scotch tape and a piece of aluminum foil, turn it into an attractive Christmas candle.
3. Last, take a milk carton, a ping-pong ball, and an empty packet of Cocoa Puffs. Make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower.
Lesson 7
Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
Now:
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
Lesson 8
1. Get ready to go out.
2. Sit on the floor of your bathroom reading picture books for half an hour.
3. Go out the front door.
4. Come in again. Go out.
5. Come back in.
6. Go out again.
7. Walk down the front path.
8. Walk back up it.
9. Walk down it again.
10. Walk very slowly down the sidewalk for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely, and ask at least 6 questions about every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue, and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps.
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbors come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.
You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.
Lesson 9
Repeat everything you have learned at least (if not more than) five times.
Lesson 10
Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is also excellent). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.
Lesson 11
1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.
You are now ready to feed a nine- month old baby.
Lesson 12
Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street, Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s “Noggin”?) Exactly the point.
Lesson 13
Move to the tropics. Find or make a compost pile. Dig down about halfway
and stick your nose in it. Do this 3-5 times a day for at least two years.
Lesson 14
Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying “mommy” repeatedly.
(Important: no more than a four second delay between each “mommy”; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.
Lesson 15
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the “mommy” tape made from Lesson 14 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.
This is all very tongue in cheek, anyone who is parent will say “it’s all worth it!” Share it with your friends, both those who do and don’t have kids. I guarantee they’ll get a chuckle out of it. Remember, a sense of humor is one of the most important things you’ll need when you become a parent!
Sounds a bit far fetched, but according to recent research laughing results in the production of more melatonin which aids in relaxation and somehow results in your baby having fewer allergies. They specifically mention that people with high levels of melatonin have lower instances of eczema. The bloggers at Baby Babble (makers of Stoneyfield Farm’s Organic yobaby products) just mentioned this in a post called Breastfeeding? Laugh it up and you may help improve your child’s allergy.
I wonder if the folks at Stoneyfield have tried getting their cows to laugh while they are being milked. 😉
I happened upon their blog a few weeks ago when doing some research for Babble Soft and have found their posts to be pretty interesting so far. My kids started having yobaby yogurts soon after they were eating solids. Now Stoneyfield offers yokids yogurts that have less fat but still taste yummy.
Anyway, what a great reason to watch comedies, cartoons, and have your husband work on his sense of humor while you breastfeed! If you happened to read this post while you were breastfeeding, I hope it made you laugh.
I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! To check out more baby advice, check out the baby tips category. 
I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! 🙂
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